Energy efficiency study of representative microcontrollers for wearable electronics

Abstract

Wearable electronics are gaining commercial relevance nowadays. Applications like smartwatches and personal fitness trackers are already commercially available. Unfortunately, the operating time of most current devices is limited by small battery capacities. Many devices require to be charged every day. Human bodies can generate egnough power to operate electronic devices practically indefinitely. The challenge is to harvest this power and to use it as efficient as possible. This paper bases on our previous paper [1] and our studies of energy harvesting on human bodies. It compares the amount of electrical energy being available from human body energy harvesting with the energy efficiency of certain representative microcontrollers. The paper gives a guideline to choose the best microcontroller for different mount points on human bodies according to their available, continuous power budget.